Kenneth Rijock

Friday, April 18, 2014

That's NOT Google, my friends, but a new search engine that opens the door to purchase drugs, weapons and financial crime sources and methods. Ever since Silk Road was shut down, purveyors of illicit goods, which include websites that sell aids to financial crime, and assorted other aids for the usual white-collar suspects, have had no central marketplace place to sell their wares. Unfortunately, this has now come to an end; it is called Gram, and the beta (testing) version has now come online. Yes, drugs and guns are available there, but more important, the tools financial criminals need are also for sale. The site advertises that there is no child pornography, hitmen for sale, or investment schemes; I am not impressed with its ethics.

I won't send you the URL, for obvious reasons. You can't get there from your favorite search engine. The site can only be accessed through the Tor Project, the web anonymizer that many readers are familiar with, because, once downloaded, the Tor browser randomly selects an Internet Protocol (IP) address each time you log on. The website address, which uses the pseudo-domain name ".onion", is opaque, with sixteen alpha-numeric characters. The Tor network.which employs a complex routing scheme, has been variously described as a facilitator of criminal activity, and a legitimate privacy tool.

The list is endless; I noted that many of the vendors are located in Belgium.The vendors accept BTC, USD, GBP and EU in payment. While it is merely a search engine, one wonders how long it will be before law enforcement agencies become aware of it, and seek to shut it down. I recommend that you do not seek to access it, lest you and your IP address somehow shows up as a "Person of Interest," somewhere in the intelligence or law enforcement world.